The Rhode Island Technology Council has changed its name, restructured and
shifted focus to two industry niches: information and biotechnology.
RITEC, which has represented technology companies in Rhode Island since its inception in 1999, made the announcement of its name change to the Tech Collective on Oct. 26. The nonprofit organization has grown into a sort of holding company, which will oversee two specific industry association sub-groups: Infogroup, representing information technology companies; and Biogroup, representing biotechnology and life sciences companies.
“When we formed, (RITEC) was designed to serve the technology industry broadly,” said Katherine O’Dea, executive director of the Tech Collective. “The members smartly decided to focus on what was big at the time, and information technology was in 1999. By the time we wanted to expand into other areas, RITEC was already closely affiliated with information technology.”
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The organization re-branded itself and restructured its hierarchy, forming two independent, industry-specific technology groups that would be supported by the Tech Collective. Each of the groups will have an active voice at the state level, O’Dea said, but can also utilize the voice of the collective.
“The Tech Collective is an evolution of RITEC, a holding company that will support other industry clusters” within it, O’Dea said. “This is a whole new model of doing business.”
The organization changed the way it works with companies, schools and people in the effort to be more productive, the executive director said. There can only be a certain number of companies in a certain sector, but if each industry wanted its own cluster and independent organization, the groups wouldn’t have enough mass and resources to support themselves, she said. The Tech Collective, in this way, acts like a company with wholly owned subsidiaries.
“The Tech Collective owns the associations but they have their own identity and autonomy,” O’Dea said. Infogroup and Biogroup both have their own steering committees, which report to the collective’s board. Three board members will also serve on the steering committee, which will have seven to 11 members. The Tech Collective has 21 board members, including O’Dea, who sits on both steering committees.
The work of RITEC will be continued within the Infogroup, she said. The organization has a five-year-old partnership with the National Academy Foundation, which develops Academies of Information Technology at local high schools and technical schools. Like RITEC, the Infogroup will offer education for students, as well as work force and incumbent worker training.
Within the Biogroup, a $3 million grant RITEC received in January from the state Department of Labor and Training will be utilized to put students and workers through a three-year biotech manufacturing course at the University of Rhode Island’s Providence campus. After the first year, O’Dea said, students will get certification in the field, and can gain employment or go on to a degree program.
The model for Biogroup will largely mirror the format for Infogroup, he said. The Tech Collective has also established a Presidents and Founders club for company owners to meet and share information. The collective also has a Web site that is under construction – www.tech-collective.org, which is connected to the former RITEC site. The two will eventually be condensed into the new collective site, O’Dea said.
O’Dea said that in the future, the Tech Collective would be adding more industry groups, possibly in marine and environmental technology, or nano-technology, but the thread of technology will remain, meaning no industry groups for tourism or health care.
“One of the reasons we went through the restructuring was to have that flexibility,” she said. “As soon as there is a big enough community (in those fields), we’ll have a launch.”
